Annette, How interesting to learn something new about you! That's awesome! I do this every year - I just didn't know there was a proper name for it. In December, I buy a big bag of Red Pontiacs for Christmas Dinner...much more than we need. Then sprout...er... chit the remaining ones and plant them out around Sr. Patty's Day - March 17th. Because of my being ill and the crazy fluctuating weather this Spring, I didn't get them planting in the earth...yet. It's cold AGAIN today and rainy. We had tornadoes last night. Nearly blew my livingroom windows into the house with the fierce blasts. The entire house shook. Then the temps dropped down dramatically into the 30s again and it is still a mite chilly today. Supposed to warm back up for the weekend. Cold, rainy, wet or not, I am planting my potatoes this weekend...if I can get someone to do it for me, that is! I am out of commission for the time being and not sure when that will end.

First of all, dormancy is very individual to each plant. At a certain point, one plant will suddenly, literally overnight, have its leaves turn yellow and drop off. Right across from it, an identical plant may be full of green leaves and even flowering. From my experience in So.Cal., mature plants that naturally go dormant will almost never have any claws and will be clean rounded at each branch end. Young plants and plants that are taken inside before they have completed growing will often have small claws on the branch ends. Remember we are dealing with plants from the tropics of Central America and the islands south of Florida. Their dormancy is a natural adaption to the drought periods not to freezing weather. In the temperate regions, the cold and the short periods of light trigger the dormancy but often the grower has to rescue the plants from the cold and thus force an early dormancy, pulling in a plant that still has small leaves growing from the branch end. The plant that was cut in the valley in February was probably coming out of dormancy early due to its size and the warm weather that the valley can have in early spring. I would guess that in January it had no claws showing. This year, So.Cal has been so warm all fall, that I only have 6 plants bare, while I have 20 still flowering, about 60 fully green, and about 40 in various stages of dropping leaves. I really wonder what this year will be like since at this time last year, two thirds of my plants were dormant by now. I used to think the shorter light was the trigger, but now I feel it is a combination of light and heat. Wierd year.

EG, I have RLS and it's extremely annoying. We don't smoke any more, I quit about ten years ago and the husband hasn't smoked since way back in the 70s, but he snores and makes all those....ahem....OTHER noises that old men make, and has to get up eleventy-zillion times a night to go to the bathroom. I, on the other hand, nap on and off all night and the only way I seemed to get any sleep was to have the TV going, turned really low. That kept him awake. We finally decided we sleep better alone and he moved to the spare bedroom. Of course, we're old ferts so sleep is more important to us than some other things might be *g*. Now we have the two puppies, who have decided they like sleeping with me at night and napping with Grandpa in the afternoon. They're small, but boy are they bed hogs! They want to cuddle up close, and they are so darned warm I'm sweating half the night. I bought some more 2x6x8' lumber today, over Mr. Husband's dead body. He just doesn't get the love of gardening. Anyway, I'll be out constructing a couple of new beds as soon as it cools down tonight. I've decided to only build three, two for raspberries and one for asparagus. I have about ten 4x4x5' fence posts from the old fence, so I thought maybe I'd use those for the strawberry bed. Maybe build two beds about 4'x4' each instead of one 8-foot bed. I think I have enough scrap lumber to make them tiered, which would be nice. I wish I could make all the beds twice the depth, but it's getting too $$$ Granny Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden

OMGoodness Luvs...those blocks turned out super cute! I've been playing around with scrapbooking papers too. I may have to invest in one of those. Hope R is feeling better! Belle~ yikes on DGS and sorry about your dogchild. But nice that DGS was so prepared. Punk~ sorry about DH having gout. My MIL suffers from it from time to time as well. I told her about cherry and blueberry juice to help it. Hope it goes away quickly. Ok you guys. It snowed all weekend and I had a busy one anyway so didn't get to paint. The sun came out today and I said I'm getting the heck outta this house....so away I ran to go thrifting! ha Took my DM with me and we hit the one by my house...found 3 books Bearing All SEasons and Somebunny Too! by Colleen Parry Bearing All Seasons by Colleen Parry and another book that is for quilts, but it has some cute patterns of beehives and things in it so I got it. Original price $15 on the quilt book and $8.99 on the painting books. I got them for 25 cents each. But then.....I went to the second TS and ya'll....I hit the motherload. I couldn't help but wish ya'll were all there with me. There were AT LEAST 20 stacks of painting books about 2 ft tall each!! A lot were multiples of the same books, but OH MY GOSH! I was having a complete fit!! I bought 37 books!! at .25cents each!! They were brand new!! It looked like some store dumped their large inventory. It was crazy! I was going nuts. I went thru all the stacks and grabbed hundreds of books to throw into my buggy...then I went over to the furniture section...found a nice comfy red sofa and went thru every one of them until I whittled them down to the 37! I just so wish ya'll could have been there! So I'm gonna put my feet up and go slowly thru all these books. I'm so way past excited!! ha I promise I'm gonna quit playin around and get something finished. Have several things started but need to buckle down on it and actually paint. Oh...FIL went to the dr and they think he did have a stroke but cannot get him in to run tests for 2 weeks??? Crazy. DH's foot is better. He is off the crutches and hobbling around on it this week. Talk to ya'll soon. ~Anj